By The first wake that I attended was conducted in a curling rink.
It was winter in Saskatchewan, and outside the snowbanks loomed over the cars. Inside, the sacred fire lit in the metal barrel, warming people like moths, while the overhead heaters rattled. At the age of eight, although I did not comprehend death deeply, I grasped the fact that something significant was unfolding that went beyond the memorial of the person we lost. Métis families came from hours away, gathered and brought heart bannock dishes, fiddle tunes, and scrapbooks filled with Polaroids–supplies to last them days.
In the Western approach to grief, we are encouraged to “move on.” The funeral is a cut-off point, beyond which we are assumed to be operable once more. But in Métis traditions, grief is a cycle, not a line. We do not bury our grief by ourselves. Rather, we carry it—together, hand to hand, story to story, song to song.
Where the Fire Still Burns: Métis Wake Traditions on the Prairies
The Wake Belongs to the People
In the Métis communities I grew up in, death did not belong to the funeral home. It resided around the kitchen table, within the community hall, and in the sacred fire, which someone always volunteered to tend. The wake was not a burden. It was a gathering of all those whose lives had been touched by the individual now gone. Elders believed the wake assisted the spirit in finding its way. But it also truly aided us in remaining.
Métis wakes, as I know them, are not tranquil. They are in-between zones where grief blends with sound, where conversation intersects with reverence. They are half Catholic wake, half Cree fire-keeping ritual, and half prairie potluck. They are born of survival: of making ceremony from what was permitted and spirit from what was disallowed. And they have shaped how I understand death: not an ending, but a passage through community.
I recall wakes lasting three days. There’s always coffee. There are crockpots connected to long extension cords. One cousin is playing fiddle while another is praying softly in Michif. Within this circle, the community is rich in stories. We tell the same old jokes and stories, like when Uncle Joe used to trap foxes in his truck or the time Mémère cooked with Crisco and a prayer. At wakes, the dead are given back to us in language, one story at a time.
But these are not only sentimental rituals. These are also an act of defiance.
The Métis people, who are often referred to as the “forgotten people” of Canada, have endured erasure for centuries. From forced relocation to cultural suppression, denied land rights, and even broken political promises. The Metis Nation does not exist as purely one or the other within the settler colonial binary, and this has caused us great harm. Thus, we resonate deeply with the things that ground us. Our wake traditions are chaotic, full of music, and defiant in their refusal to fade away from one of the very few constants we have.
Wakes like the ones I attended as a child are becoming less common.
Image via Flickr user Chris Corrigan
The death of a family member impacts us all in different ways, but now many people spend their final days in the city, far from the small-town halls where these gatherings once took place. Community halls are booked months in advance. Funeral costs climb. Not everyone can take time off to sit vigil for days on end. The work of communal mourning is often outsourced in the name of efficiency. In my experience, however, while the settings may shift, the essence of the wake — the togetherness, the storytelling, the refusal to grieve alone — remains.
I remember one wake for an elder who had lived most of her life in town but passed away in a care home two hours away. With the hall unavailable and travel too costly for many, the family lit a sacred fire in a cousin’s backyard. We crowded around lawn chairs and folding tables under a tarp, kids playing between our legs, food arriving in waves from meal trains organized over Facebook. Later that evening, a pipe ceremony was held in the local park. It wasn’t the same as gathering in the community hall — the acoustics were different, the space less formal — but the circle was there, the stories flowed, and someone still stayed up all night to tend the fire.
When a community tends a fire together, something greater than loss can take form.
With all the different and new things in the world to experience, I have not gone to a Métis wake that did not resonate with a sense of belonging. It endures when a cousin says they’re willing to drive ten hours just to be there. When someone arrives with bannock, even if no one requested it. When the kitchen tales begin and last through to sunrise. When the fiddle is played, and someone sings that certain tune we always belt out in remembrance, dedicated to those who have passed.
In Jacob’s case, we gathered in a community center on the outskirts for his wake. Both the literal and metaphorical fires of the gathering illustrated the warmth of a community coming together to grieve, we set a sacred fire and cooked stew and moose meat. Kids also crafted cards to hang on the fence so their gratitude was visible. One of the elders played the Red River Jig on repeat. And finally someone began a collection by placing an empty coffee tin out. To make sure the lost spirit didn’t escape, someone tended the fire all night long.
When the sun rose, I could barely walk due to numbness and itchiness around my eyes. We all felt a sense of embrace from the ritual as we let the silence settle around us. In our grief, we found a space to breathe, be together, be slow without hurry.
For me, the wake serves as a living archive. It’s the place I gathered my family chronicles, not from books, but from aunties recounting them sideways—in punchlines and bitter weeps. Love is portrayed in its forms, and there, I witnessed affection even after death. Most importantly, it was there I gradually began grasping the concept of mourning no longer being a solitary grief—it is a collective effort.
The wake taught me how to grieve alongside others instead of in isolation. It showed me that storytelling isn’t merely an act of communication; it’s sacred. It showed me that when a community tends a fire together, something greater than loss can take form.
Perhaps that is what I am pursuing in my recollections and writings. Or in the still moments that follow a death, keeping the fire alive.
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